91mobiles raises $1 million from India Quotient & Others

91mobiles.com, a gadget research site, raised $1 million in its pre-Series A round of funding led by India Quotient, with participation from individual investors like Gaadi.com’s ex-CEO Umang Kumar and former CEO of Tradus.com Krishna Motukuri.

The company plans to utilize these funds to expand their team, develop better research tools and content, upgrade their existing mobile site and launch an Android application. 91mobiles also plans to utilize the funds to build a research base for gadgets other than mobiles, such as laptops, cameras and accessories.

What is 91mobiles.com?

91mobiles.com is a gadget comparison website founded by Bharani Viswanathan and Nitin Mathur in 2010. The website enables users to look for gadgets that suit their preferences and then gives them a wide choice of gadgets to choose from, all of which cater to his/her needs. To help users make a well-informed decision, the website lets them compare gadgets side-by-side as well. Once the user keys in his final choice, 91mobiles.com then provides detailed reviews and video reviews to help understand the device better.

The website also lists various e-commerce website where the user can purchase the phone from. It also directs users to the closest physical stories if the user wishes to purchase it offline, though this facility is limited only to major metro cities.

91mobiles.com claims to receive over 7.5 million visitors per month, helping users compare 40,000 products daily. Till now, the company claims to have sold $100 million worth of gadgets via retailers on its website. Latest estimates from 2014 show that 250,000 users use the website per day (though in what way the website is used and how they get traffic is not known to us). 91mobiles.com earns affiliate revenue from online gadget retailers like Amazon and Flipkart, along with telecom brands like Samsung, Micromax and Airtel.

Recent investments in the online price comparison space

– Accentium Web’s product discovery and price comparison portal PriceBag.com had raised $2 million in angel funding from undisclosed angel investors. The company planned to use the funds for product development and marketing. At the time of writing this article, it seems that PriceBag has been rebranded to Taaza.com.

– PriceBaba had raised an undisclosed amount from 500 Startups’s India focused fund 500 StartupWallah and was looking to raise $3 million overall in Series A, in January this year.

– Price comparison service MySmartPrice had raised Rs 6 crore from existing investors Accel and Helion in December 2013. The company planned to use the funds to become a true horizontal player and increase focus on its mobile strategy. It recently launched a price comparison service on WhatsApp.

– Rocket Internet-backed price comparison site, PricePanda had entered India in April this year. It currently offers prices for PCs and laptops, mobiles, cameras and gaming consoles.

– Gadgetguru.com, Gadgetsindia.com and Amazon’s Junglee.com are some of 91mobiles.com’s other competitors.